Marita Noon, at the Energy Tribune, has located a speech that Obama made to the Detroit Economic Club in May 2007, when he was a mere Senator from Illinois, running for the presidency. He rolled out his ‘Three Part Plan to Change the Cars we Drive and the Fuels we Use: in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and fight the cause of global warming.’

By 2020, he expected his plan to cut our oil consumption by 2.5 million barrels of oil per day; take 50 million cars’ worth of pollution off the road; save more than $50 billion at the gas pump; and help the auto industry save millions of jobs and regain its competitive footing in the world. His plan relied on three key components: 1. Fuel Economy Standards: he envisioned a 4% increase each year. This would save 1.3 million barrels of oil per day and 20 billion gallons of gasoline per year. 2.Help for Consumers Lots more tax credits for buying ultra-efficient vehicles. 3. Help for Manufacturers: Retiree health costs add $1500 to the cost of every car. Help with health care costs in return investing 50% of savings into technology for fuel-efficient cars + tax incentives for retooling. His very long speech contained the following:

We know what the dangers are here. We know that our oil addiction is jeopardizing our national security – that we fuel our energy needs by sending $800 million a day to countries that include some of the most despotic, volatile regimes in the world. We know that oil money funds everything from the madrassas that plant the seeds of terror in young minds to the Sunni insurgents that attack our troops in Iraq. It corrupts budding democracies, and gives dictators from Venezuela to Iran the power to freely defy and threaten the international community. It even presents a target for Osama bin Laden, who has told al Qaeda to, “focus your operations on oil, especially in Iraq and the Gulf area, since this will cause [the Americans] to die off on their own.”

We know that our oil dependency is jeopardizing our planet as well – that the fossil fuels we burn are setting off a chain of dangerous weather patterns that could condemn future generations to global catastrophe. We see the effects of global climate change in our communities and around the world in record

drought, famine, and forest fires. Hurricanes and typhoons are growing in intensity, and rapidly melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could raise global sea levels high enough to swallow up large portions of every coastal city and town.

Oops!

Well, he was invested in cap-and-trade then as well, and he went on at great lengths about biofuels, a National low-Carbon Fuel Standard, jeopardizing the planet, oil addiction, alternate fuels, green energy, hurricanes and typhoons, those old rising sea-levels, etc. etc. He added “For the sake of our security, our economy, our jobs and our planet, the age of oil must end in our time.”

Sheesh, wasn’t anyone paying attention at the time? These were members of the Economic Club. No economists?

The Ideology got way ahead of Reality. And so we got the Volt, the car nobody wants, even with hefty subsidy and battery packs that catch on fire. At least the dealers don’t want it. They are turning down their allocations. Many of the Volts that were sold went to governments. New York City bought 50, the city of DeLand, FL used part of a $1.2 million grant to buy 5. The President committed the federal government to buying more than 100. And GE, who is making charging stations, will buy 3000 by 2015. That’s beyond crony capitalism into some kind of crony incest.

Citing statistics for the Nissan Leaf, Forbes Magazine counts the cost of an electric vehicle (EV): “At $0.11/KWH for electricity and $4.00/gallon for gasoline, you would have to drive the Leaf 164,000 miles to recover its additional purchase cost. Counting interest, the miles to payback is 197,000 miles. Because it is almost impossible to drive a Leaf more than 60 miles a day, the payback with interest would take more than nine years.” But, they state: “The cost is not the biggest problem.” “The biggest drawback is not range, but refueling time. A few minutes spent at a gas station will give a conventional car 300 to 400 miles of range. In contrast, it takes 20 hours to completely recharge a Nissan Leaf from 110V house current. An extra-cost 240V charger shortens this time to 8 hours. There are expensive 480V chargers that can cut this time to 4 hours, but Nissan cautions that using them very often will shorten the life of the car’s batteries.”

Obama gave billions to “green” energy companies, Solyndra is just one of the many failures. Beacon Power Company filed for Bankruptcy — they had developed technology to provide energy storage for the intermittent solar and wind industries. EnerDel made lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, but there really wasn’t any demand and they went bankrupt, as did a number of other companies financed by the administration.

Never fear, President Obama plans to ride his rescue of General Motors and Chrysler to a re-election victory. He made a surprise visit to the Detroit auto show, and AP reports that the auto bailout is a case study for his efforts to revive the economy and a potential point of contrast with Republican Mitt Romney — who opposed Obama’s decision to pour billions of dollars into the auto companies. The president’s campaign sees the auto storyline as a potent argument against Romney — who even though he is the son of a Detroit auto executive actually opposed the bailout. That storyline requires a quite a bit of embroidering, and the public may just possibly not be as dumb as Obama thinks they are.

Well, Obama hasn’t got a record of accomplishments to run on, but he’s skilled at telling stories. Maybe it’ll work.

If President Barack Obama were to schedule a major speech tomorrow, and tell the assorted networks that America was returning to oil production— he was lifting the federal bans on drilling—the price of oil would start dropping the next day.

In 2008, Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) refused to vote for any new offshore drilling. In a conversation with minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Salazar objected to allowing any drilling on America’s outer continental shelf—even if gas prices reached $10 a gallon. Obama named him Secretary of the Interior.

In 2008, Steven Chu, head of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories at U. of California Berkeley, told the Wall Street Journal that “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” he also said “We have lots of fossil fuel; that’s really both good and bad news. We won’t run out of energy, but there’s enough carbon in the ground to really cook us.” Obama named him Secretary of Energy.

During the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama said “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” And “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.” He was elected president.

I don’t know if Obama ever took a class in economics, but he seems to be totally unfamiliar with the basic laws of supply and demand. When supply is restricted, the cost goes up. When the cost of gasoline goes up, so does the cost of everything else.

Goods are transported by truck, and when delivery costs more, the price of your groceries cost more. When the government is busily printing money, the value of the dollar goes down. Oddly enough, the price of gas and the cost of food are not included in the government’s statistics on inflation. You have to keep track of that yourself.

President Obama speaks enthusiastically about his clean, green economy of tomorrow; but he doesn’t seem to understand that windmills and solar arrays produce only small amounts of electricity, which has little to do with transportation, and does not replace gasoline. Our transportation sector is powered by petroleum, and will continue to be powered by petroleum far into the foreseeable future. There is no alternative.

Why do I say that an Obama speech turning the energy sector free would start to bring down oil prices right away? Ronald Reagan did it, and George W. Bush did it. There is evidence. And the evidence that Obama’s clean, green government subsidized energy will prove to be an effective alternative — ever? Nonexistent.

Part of the problem with blogging is that there are so many interesting storied to write about, and nowhere near enough time to write about them all. Here’s just some of the stories catching my attention:

The “terminally ill” Lockerbie bomber, who had only three months to live, is living the good life six months late in Libya. Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was granted his release on August 20, last year on humanitarian terms as he was a dying man, and had served eight years of his 27 year sentence. According to the Telegraph:

Megrahi is now living in a spacious two-story villa with his wife and their five grown-up children in a prosperous suburb of Tripoli. …

The Megrahis, who are part of a prominent tribe, are well off and it is understood that his family was paid substantial compensation by the Libyan Government after he was jailed for life.

President Obama was outraged by the decision of the Scottish government, and loudly condemned the action. Some prominent Democrats called for Senate hearings. There were suggestions that the Scottish government may have released the Lockerbie bomber because of a desire to improve commercial ties between Britain and Libya.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill received much of the blame. CNN reported:

He had talked to families of British and U.S. victims, US. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, British authorities, Libyan officials, and al Megrahi himself, declassified Scottish government records show.

No hearings, no inquiries, Senate unanimously voted condemnation and moved on. 270 people (189 Americans) still dead. Old news.

Nancy Pelosi has “seen the light” — or so she would have voters believe. She told Larry King that she doesn’t necessarily oppose a vote on allowing drilling:

But I don’t — that is not excluded, let me say it that way. It depends how that is proposed, if the safeguards are there.

Now, for those of you not fluent in liberal-speak, that means as long as a bill can be crafted that sounds like it allows oil drilling, but when you get right down to it, doesn’t actually allow drill to touch soil anywhere near a drop of oil, then she will allow it to come to a vote. Which, not coincidentally, just happens to be Barack Obama’s position. (h/t Michelle Malkin)

Speaking of his anointedness, Barack Obama, while telling voters he supports offshore drilling, is the sole supporter of a bill that would prohibit the geological research necessary to actually find the oil. (h/t Deroy Murdock)

Which leaves me wondering: is it possible for these people to open their mouths without lying?

If you want affordable transportation any time this decade, or next — if you want electricity to remain affordable — you damn well better vote Republican this fall. They are the only party that is in favor of increasing all our domestic energy supplies.

Contrary to Barack Obama’s and Democrats’ mantra that “we can’t drill our way out” of high gas prices, one day after President Bush announced that he was rescinding the executive order that prohibited drilling off America’s coasts, the price of oil experienced its biggest decline in 17 years, at one point plummeting more than $10 off the day’s high to settle $6.44 lower.

And that’s with the full knowledge that no drilling can begin until congress also lifts restrictions. Imagine how much the price will decline when that happens, let alone when oil starts flowing.

Nancy Pelosi accidentally conceded last week that Republicans have been right all along when she demanded the president open the strategic oil reserves to reduce the price of oil. An unwitting admission that increasing supply lowers cost.

Democrats: wrong on oil, wrong on energy, wrong on the economy. Pay close enough attention and you’ll soon discover that Democrats are wrong on almost everything.